Rockstar’s newest and perhaps most ambitious title, the marvel of technology and storytelling that is L.A. Noire, uses incredible face-mapping techniques to craft a startlingly subtle and realistic murder mystery game. But Rockstar’s attention to detail didn’t stop there: The team had decided to create an authentic depiction of the City of Angels in the 1940s, and needed as much data as they could find. Rockstar’s ace in the hole? They relied on the services of a daredevil photographer named Robert Spence, known for documenting Los Angeles while hanging out of a plane’s cockpit with his 46-pound camera.

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About Michail Fragkias

An applied economist working at the intersection of cities, land use and sustainability; currently, an associate professor at the Department of Economics at Boise State University; formerly, an interdisciplinary science coordinator on the theme of urbanization and global environmental change; father of three; husband of one.